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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29361801">The Knock</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/flora_tyronelle/pseuds/flora_tyronelle'>flora_tyronelle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Implied Relationship, M/M, Ocean related horror, Spooky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:28:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,634</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29361801</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/flora_tyronelle/pseuds/flora_tyronelle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Be careful who comes in through the front door.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sirius Black/Remus Lupin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>RS Fireside Tales Vol.3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Knock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This is the knock at the end of the world. It comes three times, short and sharp, rat-tat-tat, and Remus stares blindly at the door, eerily cocooned by the roar of the sea. All of the lights are off. The walls drip with salty water. He has been here before. He has never seen this place. It’s all- a jumble. His hair is sopping wet. And somebody is outside, waiting to be let in.</p><p>This is the door at the end of the world. Remus staggers forward. He steps forward. He ebbs and flows, he travels gently, he stops, then goes again. His boots splash against the rain-washed floor. The hand stretched out in front of him is pale and shaking, illuminated by-</p><p>By what? There are no windows down here, down in the base of the lighthouse.</p><p>That knock again. Sharp. It hurts. Stop thinking about things that don’t matter. Remus knuckles a hand against his bare forehead. When he takes it away, blood is smeared on his fingertips. Blood? How did that get there? The thought brings another spike of pain, so Remus pushes it away. He takes another step. The door is so close. All he has to do is turn the handle. All he has to do is let them in. So close. So close…</p><p>This is the pain at the end of the world, the pain that will obliterate everything, it sears his head and shakes his heart sharply like a rat in the jaws of the dog. Remus falters and falls to his knees. Saltwater splashes into his mouth. The rock is black and full of teeth. It shivers in front of him in tides of unending fear and sorrow. Remus can’t look away. Why is he here? What’s happening to him? What should he do?</p><p>
  <strong>Rat-tat-tat.</strong>
</p><p>This is the knock, this is the door, this is the pain and the door and the knock that won’t leave him alone. Remus wrenches his head up. The door is so close that he can reach out and touch it. Above, the great tower of the lighthouse rises into infinite shadows. The light is far, far away. Below is nothing but darkness and gnashing teeth. Remus is so alone. He feels so alone. Is somebody outside? Have they come to help him?</p><p>Of course they have, all he needs is to open the door, if he would only open the door-</p><p>Remus stretches out his hand.</p><p>The waves smash against the rock. The wind howls. The new moon is out there, grinning thin above the black water, somebody else is out there, somebody is out there waiting for him. The metal handle is cold and slippery to the touch; Remus grips it, pulls himself up. As he stands, the stranger outside knocks for a fourth time, and the sound makes him flinch more than the vast rumble of the ocean outside. But he holds his balance, grits his teeth. The handle gives. The door shudders open. And on the landing outside stands the man at the end of the world.</p><p>Although, looking at him, he could be a beginning. He stands so surely before the moon-drenched tide, feet planted on the steps, shoulders thrown wide, face carved out of shadow, black hair slicked down to his head. Remus has never seen him before in his life. And he’s never been so relieved to find a stranger on the doorstep.</p><p>“Oh, thank God,” he gabbles, stumbling into the jaws of the wind, one hand gripping the jamb, “you’ve come, thank God, I’ve been waiting for you-”</p><p>“Remus,” says the stranger, and his voice is full of storm and fear, “let me in, for God’s sake, the night is awful. What has become of you?” He comes close, his pale eyes flashing (though there was no light, where was the goddamned light?). Remus freezes in place. He doesn’t know this man.</p><p>“Who are you?” He asks, roughly. Fear is rising in him, choking, indeterminate. What is he doing here? What’s happening to him?</p><p>“It’s <em>me</em>,” the man says, seizing hold of Remus’s shoulders and shaking them roughly. “For God’s sake, Remus-”</p><p>But the rest of his words are ripped from his mouth by the howling gale that screams between them and Remus stares up in horror at the wave that rears up half as high as the lighthouse itself, a churning wall of water threatening to smash down where they stand and dash them both to pieces. Seeing the terror in his face, the man from the boat doesn’t hesitate. He lurches forward, wrenching Remus’s hand from the doorway and sending him tumbling backward into the darkness. There’s a slam, and then the thunderous roar of the breaking sea. Remus can taste blood and saltwater. His head is throbbing. Close to the shell of his ear, somebody else is breathing hard. They must be lying nearly atop one another, splashed down in the pool collected on the rough rock. He imagines them in bright light. Perhaps they look sweet. Perhaps they look ragged. Perhaps-</p><p>The sensation of rising water breaks through his half-baked musings. It creeps up his spine, gurgling over the backs of his hands. Remus jolts in panic. He tries to sit up, then to thrash, for he’s stuck in place, he can’t move, the <em>water</em>, oh God, doesn’t the other man feel the water? He tries to shout, but nothing comes out. It’s up to his neck, it’s rising up his frozen cheeks, his chest heaves like a quaking island in the middle of a shadowy sea. I will drown, he thinks, and then the water touches his lips-</p><p>And he doesn’t think anything at all.</p><p>~</p><p>The wave that breaks is the end of the world. Moonlight filters down through the screaming sea. Remus floats near the bottom, looking up. He can’t move. He can’t swim. He is only anchored, watching the furious water swirl against the rock. Peter had warned them. He had warned them both. Why hadn’t they listened?</p><p>Down with the wrecks and the bones. Far away from the light. Don’t swing the lamp; don’t make it angry.</p><p>But they had, and now Remus is going to pay. He is going to pay with his life.</p><p>~</p><p>A lighthouse is a bastion against the might of the sea. Thrusting up from a vestige of land, it brandishes like a fist into the sallow darkness, shouldering through waves, glaring at spray; you can’t take our ships, you can’t take our men. We will save them. We will guide them back home. Greycliffe Light should have been the same. It should have drawn the teeth; taken the wild and thrown it right back. Only they were too far out. They were too far out and when the wind had started screaming, there had been nothing they could do.</p><p>James had climbed the ladder first. Ah, brave James- he said he wouldn’t wait for the storm to tear them all to shreds. Remus had watched him go, cowering on the bunk with a half-drained bottle of whiskey in his hand, a plea on his lips: don’t go up, don’t leave us. But he hadn’t said it. James had disappeared, through the hatch.</p><p>Pete was in the corner by then, praying over a battered old rosary. They’d laughed at him, seventeen days ago, called him a superstitious old man. Not anymore. Not anymore. Remus drank. Peter prayed. The wind gnawed hungrily at the thick stone walls.</p><p>James did not come back.</p><p>~</p><p>The light that glows is the end of the world. Remus stares at it through slitted eyes, arms flung up in a vague attempt to shield himself. The darkness all around him is screaming as it tears to shreds and streams out of view, blown back as though by some vicious hurricane. Hard metal rails press against the small of his back, holding him in place. This is the top of the lighthouse. This is-</p><p>“Help me.”</p><p>Is that the light? Does it speak to him? Remus grimaces through a fresh wave of dread. The voice is… familiar.</p><p>“Help me,” it pleads again, shaky with some terrible kind of urgency, “help me, Remus. I’m so cold. Please.”</p><p>The cold, oh, God, the cold. It plunges into him like a knife; his breath suddenly plumes in front of his face, hot, viscous steam in the glaring white light. Ice creeps over his skin. He is being entombed. He will surely die. Saltwater sloshes between his teeth.</p><p>“Please,” the voice whispers again. It’s getting weaker. Remus is so, so afraid. Afraid of this wretched thing that he cannot see, repulsed by its soft entreaties, stripped apart and frozen by the unblinking gaze of the white lamp.</p><p>“Remus…”</p><p>All at once, the invisible wind stops blowing. There is a deadness to the air, a final ending. Remus knows he should not, but he feels relieved. Whatever was out there is gone. It can’t get to him now.</p><p><strong>PLEASE</strong>.</p><p>The light goes out. The ice on his skin bursts into black flame. And a hand, a wet, cold, salty hand closes tight and sudden around his wrist. Remus opens his mouth to scream as he is thrown from the balcony and drops to the devouring crash of the waves below-</p><p>~</p><p>He’s drowning again, he’s swimming, he’s held under, God, please help him, he’s going to drown! He thrashes and flails. The underskin of the ocean stares back at him, filled with white foam and sharp moonlight. His lungs burn. He had opened the door, he remembers, why had he opened the door?</p><p>James hadn’t opened the hatch when he’d climbed up. James had already gone. In the last glance of the white light Remus had just seen the figure out on the balcony, cast in terrible shadow. Then the wave had come. The whole column had shaken. And then he was gone.</p><p><em>We shouldn’t have come here</em>, Pete said. <em>We shouldn’t have come, we shouldn’t have come, why did you let me go up to the light? </em>Remus had grabbed him; shook him.</p><p>
  <em>What do you mean, go up to the light?</em>
</p><p>He hadn’t answered. In the dim lamplight, Remus had realised that Pete’s hair was falling out and going grey. Seventeen days they had been in this storm. Seventeen days since Pete had last gone up to the light.</p><p>
  <em>What do you mean, go up to the light?!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name-</em>
</p><p>A wave had struck them again, so hard that Remus staggered. He was drunk, he knew it, he thought he was likely losing his mind, but what had Pete meant when he talked about the light? He grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, and then Pete had fought back and he had never thought of the little fish knife left on the table until Peter had snatched it up and almost slit his gizzards.</p><p>He had only meant to get the knife.</p><p>He had only meant to calm him down.</p><p>He’d just wanted him to stop with all that <em>noise</em>.</p><p>Seventeen days. Seventeen for blood and sorrow; eighteen for a sailor’s burial; nineteen for no more whiskey; twenty for a knock. A knock that came at the end of the world.</p><p>What is it now? Remus suddenly wonders. Is it twenty-one? Is twenty-one for drowning? He shuts his mouth and closes his eyes.</p><p>~</p><p>The sea takes its own due. On stranger waters you meet stranger walkers; natural forces made flesh. Some are gentle, some are not. The one angered by the light is cold and old and rigid in its fury and it has watched for a chance to take back that which belongs to it. There is no dominion here that belongs to brick and bone. There is only the wave. There is only the grey-slick water.</p><p>First, it sent the storm. Terrible storm, fists-on-the-window storm, drown-a-ship-and-sink-a-lady storm that will make them cry and weep and sink first to the bottom of a bottle. Then, when they despaired, it began to climb the walls.</p><p>One embraced the wave. Another came into the water already dead and bleeding. The third…</p><p>The third is waiting for him, drowning at the bottom of the ocean.</p><p>~</p><p>These are the eyes at the end of the world. Beneath the weight of the water, Remus stares into the silver shining things knowing that his mind has at last unravelled and very grateful for it. The man from the doorstep is floating in front of him, above him; that dark hair billowing out with each thrumming wave, his mouth opening to speak, his hand extended in supplication. Remus would like to take it, but he can’t, because he is still held down. He is bound to the floor and cannot let go. Anger flashes across the man’s face.</p><p>
  <span class="u">Do not let go.</span>
</p><p>Remus needs to breathe so badly that he is about to black out. His muscles have turned to the water that surrounds him.</p><p>
  <span class="u">Do not!</span>
</p><p>The vice does not lessen. Remus blacks out. When he comes to, everything is different.</p><p>~</p><p>Under the sea, dead men tell no tales. When the storm finally breaks around Britain’s most westerly light, a boat is rowed across the waves. They hope to find the men alive, or if not, to know their story. One was a newcomer, the press reported, tending to his first light. They wanted to make it seem more suspenseful in the waiting and more tragic in the likely delivery.</p><p>A red-headed woman stands on the jetty and watches, as she has done for the past twenty-five days. The wind toys with strands of her hair. The waves pound beneath her feet. Her belly has already begun to swell.</p><p>~</p><p><em>You told me,</em> Remus says, <em>that I knew you.</em> He is cradled in kelp, pinned down by the water-man. Sirius, or so he says. Sirius does not like to talk about the lighthouse.</p><p><span class="u">Do not think about it. There was only darkness there</span>.</p><p><em>But when I opened the door</em>, Remus persists, tracing a hand over those long, liquid thighs, <em>you said that you knew me. You said, it’s me. You said my name. How did you know my name?</em></p><p>~</p><p>On shore, Sirius Black reads the paper and chews himself down to nothing with the agony of waiting. First time keeper, Remus Lupin! Cries the black and white print; novice to the trade, trapped for twenty-three days in a hellish storm. Will they be found alive?</p><p>Sirius flings the words away and goes to the window. This is the wrong coast, but he can still see the sea. Dusk is coming in. Out on the reef, the light begins to make its sweep. Deep in his gut, he knows that Remus is never coming home.</p><p>~</p><p>This is the change at the end of the world. Flesh sloughs from bone. Eels swim between the eye sockets. The living heart and brain dissolve into saltwater, nothing more than atoms on the tide. The thing that was once Remus Lupin doesn’t know that. It swims, and it waits. From up on the reef, the lamplight sways over the skin of the ocean. When it moves away, it is time.</p><p>Rain spatters against the windowpane of the little house on the cliff. Emptier now, though folk in the village still remember the other young man who used to live there, the one with the strange name and the amber eyes. Over the sound of a summer storm, there comes a frantic knocking at the front door.</p><p>Sirius Black gets up. Idly, he wonders who could it could be. Awfully late for a social call. And in such terrible weather, too.</p><p>He opens the door.</p><p>This is the knock at the end of the world.</p>
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